June 23, 2016 - New Quoting Features Review Webinar Recording

Written by Aaron Shoemaker Updated over a week ago

Here's the webinar recording from Thursday, June 23. You can see all the wonderful questions, and our answers, below the video. Some of the questions that were answered in-depth during the webinar are not written out below, so you need to watch the video AND read the Q&A for the full First Class Experience.

Q. Can you create duplicate quotes for different customers?A. As mentioned in the webinar, this can be accomplished via quote templates which can be found in the navigation menu (Quotes → Quote Templates)

Q. If a contact is added to a location does it transfer to the quote?A. Any location contacts can be selected when sending a quote. Additionally, new location contacts can be added when sending the quote.

Q. Out of curiosity, will you be adding font options to the "message" section to match Company Logo's?A. Additional font choices is a good idea, and we have several customers interested in that. There are specific “web safe” fonts that we could expand our editor to include, but we won’t be able to support all fonts out there because they don’t work in web views of quotes. This most likely won’t be something that we work on in the near-term, but could definitely be something that we include with other improvements to the visual editor that replaced Markdown code.

Q. Will you be updating the notification when a specific user gets a quote approval, vs notification to all users?A. Generally speaking, our entire notification system needs an overhaul. While it’s passable right now, it isn’t as configurable or functional as many customers would like it to be. We do want, and plan, to include more specific notification options such as the one mentioned in this question.

Q. old quote system our managers use to create the quote and assign it w/ our sales reps name and submitted quote.....sales reps went in daily and searched for quotes they were assigned to and would send to customer........is this still going to be able to work for us this way with the new quote system?A. The “Submitted” status for quotes in ServiceTrade was always intended to represent that quote has been submitted to the customer, not internally. There are a few options available to replicate your existing process. First, you can use a tag such as “Ready_Send” to signify quotes that are in a draft status that are ready to be sent to the customer. Alternatively, you can move quotes to the “Submitted” status without actually sending them to the customer by using the option shown in this screenshot. Alternatively, your process could be that any sales rep with a Draft quote assigned to them means they should review and send to the customer.

Q. So once approved it creates a job or a service?A. Once a quote is marked “Approved” then you will have an option to “Create a Job from Quote”, just like in the old quote page. If you chose to quote a recurring service, which is a new ability, then the first job to fulfill that recurring service will be created and that recurring service will be treated just like any other recurring service on the Location after quote approval.

Q. Can the customer reply to the time of arrival email to possibly push the time back?A. Currently, replies to the email will not be received by anyone because they go to a “no-reply” address. However, we are aware of this issue and will be correcting that so replies go to the sender of the en route notification message (i.e. the technician). At that point, if the customer replies to the email and your technician receives it, he/she will be able to handle it as desired.

Q. We find a lot of our customers do not receive the email that is sent from ST for their quote, how can we combat this? We are having to print to PDF and send it that way.A. If your customer’s email server outright rejects the quote notification(s) (i.e. the emails bounce), you will receive an email containing the reason for the bounce. An incorrect email address is the most common cause for bouncing emails. If the emails are being filtered by the customer’s email spam settings, you should request that they adjust their settings. ServiceTrade uses a very common approach for sending these notifications that only overly-restrictive spam filters block. You can, of course, always send a copy of the quote notification email to yourself and then copy the link to directly email your customer, if they are able to receive direct emails from you but spam filters are blocking messages from the ServiceTrade system.

Q. When you hit the create a quote button and the pop up comes up to create your first request-why is there no option to select a technician or date and how long the job will take?A. The create quote form on the location and deficiency pages capture the minimum amount of information necessary to create a quote. From there, any further details, including those mentioned in this question, can easily be added or edited on the quote. Specifically, the details mentioned in this question can be edited on the individual services that comprise the quote.

Q. Can we program the message to not show price so they have to open the quote?A. Not yet, but we have heard feedback that this is something many of our customers would like to be able to do. We plan to discuss this internally and find a way to make this possible via a configurable option.

Q. Can we reopen and Approved and completed quote/job and update pricing for next year or next cycle?A. An approved quote with a job cannot be re-opened or re-used for a different job. However, if you set up either Quote Templates, Service Templates, or a combination of both, in conjunction with customer-specific sets of prices (called Contracts in ServiceTrade), then you should be able to rapidly create identical quotes for different customers, or for future identical services for the same customer.

Q. Sometimes we have Original Calls included in quotes. In the future, it would be nice to assign an approved quote to an existing ticket number.A. We completely agree this is something we are planning on enabling you to do.

Q. Can I quote multiple locations at the same time under one customer? Can we quote the customer and not the location?A. The short-term answer is no to both. We may enable one or both of those capabilities in the longer-term future, but the complexity and priority of that have not yet been determined.

Q. Does notification to customer come from the TECH? or from ServiceTrade support??A. Currently, the email comes from a “noreply@servicetrade.com” address. However, we are aware of this issue and will be correcting that so the email appears to come from the tech, and replies go to the sender of the en route notification message (i.e. the technician).

Q. A way to have multiple totals would be greatA. We’ve considered this as future functionality, but we have no immediate plans to add this feature.

Q. Can customers print quotes as a PDFs?A. Yes, they have both Print and PDF icons in the top-right of their web view of the quote.

Q. is it possible to eliminate the "Grand Total" at bottom of quote?A. No. We’d be interested in understanding why you want to avoid showing the customer how much they are going to pay for you quoted work.

Q. Can we see the service report in the same window as the quote? A. It is now much easier to access the job in order to view any notes or attachments, such as a service report, that may help you build a quote. We recommend that you open the service report in another browser tab or window. Multiple monitors can be very helpful in this scenario.

Q. can we have a way to attach the same photos to the quote that the techs have uploaded?A. Photos that are taken as a part of the deficiency will automatically be added to the quote when that deficiency is added to the quote. We hope to make it easier to transfer job attachments to quotes in the future.

Q. Can you create a quote on an active job without having to create a deficiency?A. You can create a quote without a deficiency by going to the Location page and clicking “Create Quote.” However, you cannot add approved, quoted work to an existing job yet. This is a feature that we do plan on working on, to enable our customers to get official approval for additional work on an active job.

Q. May I book jobs for more than 1-2 days? It only allows me to add hours. I have a job that will take 2-3 weeks and not able to book it for that longA. When scheduling jobs that spread across days, you will need to use multiple appointments where each appoint represents a single day’s worth of work. The fastest way to accomplish this is via the “Add New Appointment” button on the job page found at the top left corner of the “Appointments” section as seen in this screenshot. Next, use the “Select multiple days” option seen in this screenshot.